Warcraft III: Reforged - now with lowest user metacritic score of all time

[Lacrymas]

It looks like shit. It has this nu-Blizz/contemporary-in-general plastic aesthetic I despise.

 

[Maculo]

I am not sold on all the graphical changes. While the Knights, Dreadlord, and Abominations look good imo, the footman pauldrons irk me.

I am curious what other changes Blizzard would make to the campaign. I would not mind fresh easter eggs, secrets, or challenges. Reign of Chaos was not that difficult, especially relative to later TFT missions on Hard (first undead mission on Hard drives me up a wall to this day). Modern Blizzard has fucked up a lot, but I do not think the campaign mechanics from Starcraft 2 are one of those mistakes (note, not speaking of the story or competitive play).

Maybe they can give us the Arthas/Illidan duel that was cut to a in-game cutscene.

 

[karoliner]

Weren't Jaina's tits smaller?

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, the hardest missions were defending the town with the humans and the last undead one. The human one is easily mitigated by attacking the undead forces that come to your town from behind, that way you could selectively take out the meatwagons and liches, while allowing your guard towers to kill everything else. The last undead one is pretty tough whatever you do. There were some other more annoying than hard undead missions. Mostly to do with the assault on the elves. If they remake the campaign and add new things, this remaster might be worth it, but the graphical "upgrade" is an affront to aesthetics.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah... the first undead mission of TFT is the only hard mission of TFT. After that it's kind of a cakewalk. Sylvannas's stuff is fairly trivialized by possessions and the chariot thing that provides new easymode undead healing, while the Arthas stuff is fairly rigidly scaled down to his decreasing level. Human stuff is half joke missions half hero-stomps, NE has unconventional but otherwise fairly easy missions.

Final undead of RoC is always a nail biter.

 

[Lacrymas]

Nah, it's more gimmicky than hard, you just need good micro. The hardest are definitely the last 2, the one where you have to take out the demon gate with Sylvanas and the rogue knight (all of Sylvanas' missions are not exactly pushovers), and the one where you race with Illidan to the throne. The last one is tough because the AI cheats, it gives Illidan 200 food limit while the naga are grotesquely overpowered in general. One of the belf missions is bullshit because the only winning strategy is spamming sorceresses.

 

[Average Manatee]

Git gud. Pretty sure I could load up any of those missions right now and win first try on hard.

Sylvie's missions are balanced against her not being able to create abominations and therefor not having anything tanky, but if she possesses anything useful at all she wipes the floor. The final one where she invades an unaware town can be basically won before the AI is allowed to fight back.

Don't recall the last undead mission for TFT being anything but a simple pushover to stomp the whole map.

Not sure which blood elf mission you are referring to. The penultimate one where you have Illidan close demon gates? If you clear the map first and have your whole army ready to support its pretty easy.

 

[Lacrymas]

Sylvanas' missions are tough because you are always outnumbered, having too much hope in banshees that can easily be killed before possessing anything is not a reliable tactic. Not sure if you can rush her last mission like you say. It's ridiculously hard to stomp the entire map on the last mission with Arthas, you have to cheese and mass frost wyrms. The belf mission is the last one before you are arrested, you start with no gold mine and have to rely on the naga to capture an undead town to have gold supply, you only have the frail elf units and you have to take out the largest undead base which spams frost wyrms. I've tried everything and only spamming sorceresses for polymorph works.

 

[Maculo]

Reign of Chaos was not that difficult, especially relative to later TFT missions on Hard (first undead mission on Hard drives me up a wall to this day).

- Humans Mission 5
- Last Undead mission of ROC

I disagree. Human Mission 5 is trivialized via points in Divine Shield and Boots of Speed. That is 30 to 45 seconds of damage immunity one can use to focus on the Wagons or a enemy hero unit. Once the side-mission with the Wagons appears, Arthas can essentially marathon through the Undead base and just kill the Wagons himself on hard. If he gets to low on health, you run away, wait for Divine Shield to reset, and rinse/repeat until the wagons are dead. Beyond that, you sit in your base, abuse Divine Shield, and reap the profits.

With the last undead mission, you can just mass necromancers and spam cripple on everything. I remember that trivializing most attack waves, although Siege Tanks were annoying as well if you could not block them.

Don't recall the last undead mission for TFT being anything but a simple pushover to stomp the whole map.

.

Maybe I need to get gud, but the first and last undead missions of TFT on hard make me rage quit. With the last mission, I destroy the last Naga base and most of the BE base, but I always end up getting bored/annoyed and dropping the mission. I destroy Illidan's force the first time, but the second or third time he always brings a more frustrating army.

I need to go back and finish it.

Nah, it's more gimmicky than hard, you just need good micro. The hardest are definitely the last 2, the one where you have to take out the demon gate with Sylvanas and the rogue knight (all of Sylvanas' missions are not exactly pushovers), and the one where you race with Illidan to the throne. The last one is tough because the AI cheats, it gives Illidan 200 food limit while the naga are grotesquely overpowered in general. One of the belf missions is bullshit because the only winning strategy is spamming sorceresses.

The last Sylvannas mission is not bad if you get the Human the dwarve units a.s.a.p. Siege Tanks make it so damn easy.

 

[Morgoth]

Weren't Jaina's tits smaller?

Perhaps, but they also had more edges and corners.

 

[Olinser]

Weren't Jaina's tits smaller?

Perhaps, but they also had more edges and corners.

Yeah on a side angle of her old model I think her old model tits actually look bigger than the new model, they stick WAY out. I think they just SEEM bigger on the new model because the graphics make her have actual cleavage - so they physically stick out less but they're more defined.

The Arthas shoulder pauldrons just look RIDICULOUS though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Guys, cmon. This mission is pathetically easy.

How2Play TFT undead:

1st control group: Arthas/Anub'arak/5 aboms/5 carrion beetles. Just A-move in and spam death coil constantly to keep aboms alive. Assuming your heroes are loaded with fun stuff like Sobi Mask and Staff of Negation to use you'll pulverize anything you come into contact with fairly quickly.
2nd control group: As many Crypt Fiends as you can get. Keep em behind and A-move
3rd control group: 3-5 meat wagons. Target down groups of casters.
4th control group: 2 Obsidian statues to power everything. Just have them in the center not doing anything.

Don't think I lost a single Abom the whole mission. When you see Illidan just focus him down with death coil and impale. gg no re. Illidan doesn't even seem to attack you and the AIs in the corner take their time.

(note that you can't reach Illidan's base, maybe mass gargoyles could kill him but w/e, not worth the time)

All the other TFT missions are similarly simple except the 1st undead mission. Acquire competency please. I'm no WC3 expert here, I've played roughly 5 games online.

 

[Olinser]

Yeah I've found that most people that compain about the last mission either are trying to take and hold all of the points with static defenses, or they didn't properly gear their heroes through the previous missions so they're weak.

Each time you take a point the AI seem to cheatproduce an attack force immediately, which is independent of their normal attacks.

Just hold the first point, kill the enemy bases as normal (a couple possessed Royal Guard are basically heroes, their abilities are awesome), then go back and take the points and its really not particularly difficult.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, most of campaign missions are a cinch if you simply get with the AI's scripted attack tempo and have your full force ready to take attacks. A full force of any race with the T3 melee unit + decent heroes + some consistent healing = almost no trouble anywhere unless fighting really strong other heroes or cheesy shit like the final undead and night elf missions from RoC. Just fight the "attack" AI force outside the base, attack the base, pull back a bit to heal for a few seconds if it gets too harsh (AI base defense never pursues your force to wipe it out like a player would).

 

[Lacrymas]

It seems like they are indeed remaking the campaign.


I just saw this and the map is completely different from the original.

 

[Maculo]

I am certain Blizzard will touch-up all the noteworthy missions, especially the last missions for each faction. Not that I need an additional reason to play the WC3 campaign, but I would never say no to an RTS release.

I also hope this gives the custom map community a boost. There seems to be so few RTS games now that any scrap looks good.

 

[Lacrymas]

I would've liked WC4 more, but I don't trust nu-Blizz to make anything good anymore, so I guess it's for the best. Especially with this aesthetic.

 

[Maculo]

I would've liked WC4 more, but I don't trust nu-Blizz to make anything good anymore, so I guess it's for the best.

As I said earlier (or in another thread), if you ignored parts of the story and competitive play, Starcraft 2 had decent campaigns. Legacy of the Void in particular allowed you build you Protoss army however you wanted (templar army, dark templar army, robot swarm, air heavy, etc.). Each mission had its own gimmick and challenge, and you could employ several strategies to win. Out of its many failings, I do not think the Blizzard's mission or campaign design suffered. Provided Blizzard brought that same level of budget and initiative, I would look forward to WC4.

Just don't let the Diablo team touch it.

 

[Lacrymas]

The metastructure of the campaign was good, yes, but the campaigns themselves were pretty terrible. I don't think I remember a single mission as vividly as I do WC2 or 3's or SC1's.

 

[Morgoth]

I would've liked WC4 more, but I don't trust nu-Blizz to make anything good anymore, so I guess it's for the best. Especially with this aesthetic.

Or perhaps they use WC3 Reforge as a stepping stone, a "learning project" for Blizzard's newfag designers to prepare them for WC4.

 

[Maculo]

The metastructure of the campaign was good, yes, but the campaigns themselves were pretty terrible. I don't think I remember a single mission as vividly as I do WC2 or 3's or SC1's.

Really? I thought the train robbery mission and the final Terran missions made a decent impression. The last mission in particular had a throwback to the extra SC1 campaign missions, where you could choose the make-up of the final enemy army. I have come to appreciate Wings of Liberty more with time, although Legacy of the Void had some of the best missions imo. You had several varied missions types, from mass army battles, time missions, stealth, and then hero-centric fights. The story was not great, but it would reward you for playing smart.

In contrast, Heart of the Swarm was cancer, both the story and Kerrigan. Kerrigan trivialized too many missions, and the missions felt terrible without her imo. In Wings of Liberty or Legacy of the Void, you succeeded against impossible odds. In Heart of the Swarm you were the impossible odds and with Kerrigan on top of it. It lacked the same satisfaction.

As much as I love WC2 and SC1, they also had some shit missions. It was not until the extra SC1 campaign missions that Blizzard really started to experiment (Enslavers campaign?). For example, the extra Protoss campaign in which you fought a combined army of Terran and Protoss with the EMP generator knocking out your shields every 5 minutes.

 

[Parabalus]

The metastructure of the campaign was good, yes, but the campaigns themselves were pretty terrible. I don't think I remember a single mission as vividly as I do WC2 or 3's or SC1's.

The WoL protoss campaign was cool, there were also a few missions in LotV that were nice.

I would've liked WC4 more, but I don't trust nu-Blizz to make anything good anymore, so I guess it's for the best. Especially with this aesthetic.

Or perhaps they use WC3 Reforge as a stepping stone, a "learning project" for Blizzard's newfag designers to prepare them for WC4.

How would they even do WC4 with the lore being lobotomized by WoW? Alternative timeline?

 

[Maculo]

How would they even do WC4 with the lore being lobotomized by WoW? Alternative timeline?

Time skip, let the event of WoW turn to myth, and reset to a low-key fantasy.

 

[Lacrymas]

I thought the SC2 campaign had a lot of gimmicks, like it was designed for people who hate RTS gameplay. The train mission is a great example, the one where you command a mecharobot too. In contrast, WC3's were always designed with the usual gameplay in mind first and gimmicks second. The story and aesthetic being extremely shit in SC2 doesn't help. I admit I haven't played LotV because I neither have the desire nor own the expansion, after the butchering of Kerrigan and the lameness that was the Zerg campaign I kinda lost interest.

How would they even do WC4 with the lore being lobotomized by WoW? Alternative timeline?

Alternate timeline is a good idea. Current WoW's lore doesn't support a multi-factional conflict, so it's not clear which the playable races can be. WC3's campaigns worked because they relied on the natural conflict that arose from the different races' goals and motivations. Commanders/heroes taking the helm helped having a personal perspective.

 

[Parabalus]

Gee, if you thought Kerrigan was butchered in HotS you really need to play the "Epilogue" missions of LotV.